We have been snowed in here, and today is the first day I can go out into the world, and I am so happy to be
From the upstairs window in the shop
It’s sunny out now, still dripping from earlier rain, but comparatively warm. I am looking forward to putting Christmas Earring Kits together this afternoon and decided to offer a special code for blog followers!
Enter code: TREE for 10% off any of our Holiday Earring Sets! 
Shelly & I are attending the Whole Bead Show in Providence, Rhode Island. after a very long plane ride we landed and immediately felt relieved to be here. This is such a beautiful state, lovely brick buildings, lots of very big historic houses, many with cupolas an interesting details, unusual shapes, porches, very cool.
Providence is jewelry central, tons of manufacturers, lots of possibilities here. My Swarovski rep. is here so we took the opportunity to visit and see their show room. I could spend days there! The showroom has these wonderful shallow drawers full of crystals, cameos, beads, and cabs of all kinds. They have a huge display of vintage pre WWI beads and pendants, OMG! Very inspirational.
One FB Fan will receive a copy of ‘Design Expressions from Brazil & Russia with CRYSTALLIZED – Swarovski Elements’. 152 pages printed in full color.
Also includes a 66 page book to help guide you in creating your own jewelry from leading designers of Brazil and Russia. One Facebook Fan will be drawn randomly from the Fan list on Bello Modo’s Facebook page on June 20th. Visit our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com
This season Swarovski really outdid themselves! Along with the three new colors they introduced a new color style called Mosaic. This was introduced under much secrecy, and no one knew about it until the last minute! We were told to watch for “something special”. What we found was this new style:
After a year and a half of no blogging and losing the original blog written on an old form of WordPress, I am starting over, new slate, new blog.
So, whats up at Bello Modo? Lots of order filling, new Swarovski colors and styles, further adventures in Seed Beads, and new C-Lon colors.
The new Swarovski colors: Cyclamen Opal, Greige, and Crystal Metallic Light Gold, plus the new pearl color: Coral, are spectacular! All winners in our book.
Greige, what does that mean? The color is a very sophisticated toned down tan color, very nice, and I predict this one will be very popular. But the name, what does it mean? So I did a search and it’s French in origin, meaning raw or undyed linen cloth. And , it does look a bit like a glittery transparent, raw linen-like color, so question answered.
The Cyclamen Opal is a pleasing opal rosy berry color, very like a typical Cyclamen flower, and the 2x is OMG!! Gorgeous. The Cyclamen AB looks like its berry stained in a very good way. Another winner.
The third color introduced (very unusual, as usually only two
are introduced) Metallic Light Gold is a mid toned gold, very pleasing, not brassy at all. I received the style #5754 Butterfly beads in this finish and I can imagine them with some Jet Nut 5000 made up into earrings, lovely. I will do this and post a picture soon.
The Coral pearls are SOOO 1940′s! What a great color. I predict that people will either love it or hate it, just that kind of color. I can imagine some very cool necklace’s made with these pearls. I look forward to seeing designs appear in the magazines. 
All summer we have been adding to our selection of seed beads. We stock almost everything made by Miyuki, and are more than half way through the Toho offerings. We are adding 15/0′s now, with Bugles and Charlottes close behind. We hope to be on to Matsuno’s by the first of the year, and we plan of offering a selection of Matsuno’s to start with rather than the full line, too much duplication. But the styles we have selected are gorgeous, two toned beads with yummy color contrasts.
We have spent quite a bit of time creating organization systems for all these beauties, and its safe to say, we are all ready to move on, so after we complete the seed beads we will move on to crystals and improve on the organization system we have for them, Woo Hoo!! Really we all are looking forward to moving on to creating our Education and Inspiration Department, something we all daydream about doing. But first we must get things listed, so a listing we go…
And finally a word about C-Lon’s new colors. Recently C-Lon introduced 32 new colors, to a list already 70+ long. I had to ask, why? and the
answer I got back? “We could not resist these colors” and, after seeing them I have to agree. They are more fashionable colors, more complicated less primary, my kind of colors. French Lilac, Cyan, Argentum, Bronze, Chestnut, the list goes on. There was not one color that I thought was a dud.
Nest show: Portland Bead Society’s Bead Bazaar
November 7th-8th at the Montgomery Park Building
Portland, Oregon
